LVIV, Ukraine – It takes but a quick stroll around Lviv’s stunning center to realize the city is a coffee lover’s dream. There are some 693 coffeehouses to choose from for a relaxing brew and taste of old bohemia.
Ever since Yuriy Kulchytsky from Lviv Oblast founded the first coffeehouse in Vienna in 1683 – which also happened to be one of the first in Europe – Lvivites have been crazy about their coffee. Indeed, coffeehouses have been so central to the life and culture of Lviv that dances were once held there, military generals denounced worrisome political undercurrents there and even the Soviets, sometime in the 1960s, understood that locals could not do without their public coffee places.
Lviv will celebrate its rich coffee heritage during a Sept. 24-26 festival on Ploscha Rynok. Now in its fourth year, the festival is an important event for its various coffeehouses, many of which are architecturally and thematically unique.
Svit Kavy, which was voted Lviv’s best coffeehouse last year, for instance, boasts an interior with 17th century beams discovered during a restoration process and original brick walls. The coffeehouse was once a metropolitan’s residence. “We didn’t want to ruin it, we wanted to highlight what was here,” said Markian Bedrii, Svit Kavy’s owner.
It is not surprising that coffee has become the beverage of choice for many of Lviv’s residents, he said. For one, because of Lviv’s often rainy weather, coffee gives the pick-me-up people living here often need. Then there is a culture that has evolved over the centuries. Coffeehouses have become the place to do business and to relax, a place to meet and to be seen.
Lviv’s first cafes appeared along what is today’s Prospect Svobody, after the authorities took down the walls of an old fortress and constructed a promenade in its place.
“The Hetmanski Valy became the beloved promenade for Lvivites,” Yurii Vynnychuk writes in his book “Tayemnytsi Lvivskoyi Kavy” (Secrets of Lviv Coffee). A history of coffee in Lviv is now in its fourth edition. Confectionary shops eventually popped up along the promenade, with coffee taking central stage. The summer pavilion of the Volf confectionary was particularly popular and a gathering place for what Vynnychuk calls “the golden youth.”
In 1845, a coffeehouse with a fake cave and guarded by two lions was built on Vysokyi Zamok, a one-time fortress on a hill that overlooks Lviv. A decade later, Emperor Franz Joseph with his youngest son, Archduke Ludwig, visited the establishment. The emperor didn’t drink coffee, however, opting for tea instead.
Perhaps the height of Lviv’s coffee craze came at the turn of the 20th century. Although not everyone could afford to visit coffeehouses, they were a place where the city elite had to be seen and barmen knew when to whisper rumors, and to whom.
Lviv’s coffeehouses, though, lived through difficult periods: sugar was in short supply during World War I, while in the 1920s the price for a cup of coffee jumped so high that the city’s leading newspaper, Lwowska Gazetta, complained about it.
After several unsettling decades, Lviv’s coffeehouses made a comeback in the 1960s. Some became a place of quiet protest. When Kentavr coffeehouse opened up at the corner of Ploscha Rynok and Halytska, students and intellectuals eagerly gathered there. Its unofficial name became “With Backs to the Soviet Authority” because the coffeehouse looked “back” toward the Ratusha, the city hall, which was the seat of Soviet power in Lviv, writes Vynnychuk.
The coffee festival has these and many more stories to share. The celebration will feature taste tests at select coffeehouses as well as on the square, competition among barmen and sale of coffee-related cutlery and other items. In the evening, visitors will be able to enjoy films, jazz and chamber music concerts and theatrical performances. As they have in the past, festival participants will pick their favorite coffeehouse through a myriad of old and new coffee joints.
The next time in Lviv, here’s a coffee tour to take:
Svit Kavy, arguably Lviv’s best, faces the imposing Katedralnyi (Latin) Cathedral on Katedralna Ploshcha 6. At the next street over, on Staroyevreiska 3, one can find Tsurkernya, so famous for its deserts that on Sundays after mass, visitors should line up for the pleasure of sitting down to delight in one of its moist Napoleon cakes. Just around the corner, on Halytska 4, is the appropriately named Kaviarnya Mapa, popular with locals and visitors because of its many hand-painted frescos of world maps.
At one end of Ploscha Rynok, on Ruska 4, the 5-table Kaviarnya Pid Synyoyu Flaskoyu (Cafe Under the Blue Bottle), with its carefully restored 16th century walls, gives the visitor a sense of Lviv’s atmosphere way back. At the other end, on Krakivska 9, is the appropriate-named Fresca, which boasts 18th and 19th century paintings of charming cherubs, discovered under layers of plaster on walls and ceilings.
Within a five-minute walk off the square, on Prospect Svobody 12, are the famed Videnska Kaviarnya, a coffeehouse that has delighted visitors for over 200 years, and Kawiarna Sztuka, on Kotliarska 8, which with its exotic exterior and richly decorated interior recalling Lviv’s Austro-Hungarian past.
Details about the festival: www.coffeefest.lviv.ua.
Kyiv Post staff writer Natalia A. Feduschak can be reached at [email protected].
